Little things you like about Pokémon

The thing Sun/Moon did with the route captains, where they're specifically optional battles, that are overpowered relative to other fights in the area, using a specific item or gimmick, that you then get after the fight with them? That is perfect and needs to stick around. It solves a few issues really well, and does so almost casually.
 
Easy bit of subtle foreshadowing in Pokemon XD: Gale of Darkness. At Dr. Kaminko's Manor, you find Jovi's Diary midgame and can read the pages if you wish. Note Jovi's Random Diary 1:

Screen Shot 2022-06-25 at 2.57.12 PM.png


"Top secret! The Pokémon HQ Lab has a secret room somewhere.""It doesn't look like anybody knows where it is. Jovi will find it first and make it a secret base!"

This may seem like random fluff text, but after Cipher Key Lair, right before the final dungeon, you get a PDA message from Professor Krane to come to the lab. He shows you a secret room where he gives you the Master Ball.

It's a very minor touch that they didn't have to add, but they did it anyway, and that alone justifies Jovi's existence to me. Even mildly annoying characters can have some clever implementation if you use them right.

Also, Chobin writing in there is pretty cute and fits his dorky character.
 
From TCRF:

SwordDec2017StepWalk.gif
SwordFinalStepWalk.gif

(comparison between December 2017 leaked build of SwSh and the final build)

The player character has a unique animation for walking down stairs in Sword/Shield. Contrast the leaked build without the animation that looks identical to walking down a slope.


are these the high-quality animations GF was talking about
 
I just tested something that's bugged me in X and Y for a long time: What happens if you don't have the $1,000 to pay the Parfum Palace entrance fee?

In that case, the doorman just lets you in with an admonishment to "act natural and don't arouse suspicion. Pass through the gate that you belong here."

It's a nice little Anti-Frustration Feature as well as another subtle reminder that pretty much everybody hates the owner's guts.
 
Replaying Shadows of Almia right now, just had to use some Roselia to cut down some logs… They shoot 9 leaves specifically, rather than 10 or 5 or whatever. Fsr that just really tickled my fancy.

Also every time I replay the PMD and Ranger games I’m struck by how amazing the soundtracks are (lets be real, in general Pokemon has good soundtracks but these are amazing) and also just how high quality these Gen 4 sidegames are. I haven’t really played any recent ones, but I have no doubt Gen 4 was definitely the peak of sidegames.

Probably also the peak of my Pokemon interest due to age and remakes of the first game I played.
 
Waiting impatiently for Go to add all the Hisuian Pokemon but I really like how (as indicated by dataminers) the Hisui dex is a category of its own rather than being combined with the Galar Pokemon. It's kind of cute to have a Pokedex that consists of just nine Pokemon.
 
green_typhlosion said:
Waiting impatiently for Go to add all the Hisuian Pokemon but I really like how (as indicated by dataminers) the Hisui dex is a category of its own rather than being combined with the Galar Pokemon. It's kind of cute to have a Pokedex that consists of just nine Pokemon.
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No need to go with dataminers, Home's done the same thing


Honestly I find it annoying. It's so...slim. And gonna be comically messy if they keep having games mid generation that takes place elsewhere but have a handful of new Pokemon. It's alreayd kind of annoying that Meltan & Melmetal are just eternally off on their own, segregated from everyone else and not even placed in order of appearence.. Imagine if Isle of Armor & Crown Tundra has been considered separate locations...what a mess.
 
R_N said:
No need to go with dataminers, Home's done the same thing
Click to expand...

Possibly dumb question: how so? I'm not tremendously familiar with all Home's workings but on the main Pokedex page everything's all in one big block, whereas in PoGo they're separated.

Also it's seven not nine in the Hisui dex, I'm really dumb today

R_N said:
Honestly I find it annoying. It's so...slim. And gonna be comically messy if they keep having games mid generation that takes place elsewhere but have a handful of new Pokemon. It's alreayd kind of annoying that Meltan & Melmetal are just eternally off on their own, segregated from everyone else and not even placed in order of appearence.. Imagine if Isle of Armor & Crown Tundra has been considered separate locations...what a mess.
Click to expand...

Honestly I prefer the messier approach. I know a lot of people advocate for an official listing with a "connected" order ala the New Pokedex in GSCHGSS (linking up evolutionary families, so Pichu gets bumped to #25 instead of #172 etc etc) but I prefer the official numbering system being chronological. Sure it's not wholly logical and it's janky to have additional species coming after mythicals, but I don't think older Pokemon should get displaced for the sake of newer ones, and I don't see much point in having a new numbering when the one we have works fine.

Though I do still wonder why Meltan wasn't an Alola Pokemon given how heavily it was tied to the Alola arc (especially given that neither of Alola's other mythicals have anything to do with the region either) but that's a lore quibble more than anything else.
 
green_typhlosion said:
Possibly dumb question: how so? I'm not tremendously familiar with all Home's workings but on the main Pokedex page everything's all in one big block, whereas in PoGo they're separated.

Also it's seven not nine in the Hisui dex, I'm really dumb today
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The Console version has both options. Big block national dex and individual.


Honestly I prefer the messier approach. I know a lot of people advocate for an official listing with a "connected" order ala the New Pokedex in GSCHGSS (linking up evolutionary families, so Pichu gets bumped to #25 instead of #172 etc etc) but I prefer the official numbering system being chronological. Sure it's not wholly logical and it's janky to have additional species coming after mythicals, but I don't think older Pokemon should get displaced for the sake of newer ones, and I don't see much point in having a new numbering when the one we have works fine.

Though I do still wonder why Meltan wasn't an Alola Pokemon given how heavily it was tied to the Alola arc (especially given that neither of Alola's other mythicals have anything to do with the region either) but that's a lore quibble more than anything else.
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I mean messy in the sense of it's stupid that the 7 Hisui pokemon are in their own category that will never get updated but because it wasnt literally in Galar

Meltan & Melmetal are in their own category becaue they debuted in Go, which has no region.
 
R_N said:
The Console version has both options. Big block national dex and individual.



I mean messy in the sense of it's stupid that the 7 Hisui pokemon are in their own category that will never get updated but because it wasnt literally in Galar

Meltan & Melmetal are in their own category becaue they debuted in Go, which has no region.
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Gamefreak themselves have stated that they don't internally divide things by Generations the way fans do. In fact this has become way more obvious post-dexit with the switch games, with every single set of titles since Let's Go having their own unique Origin symbol for Pokemon caught in those games. In fact recent internal coding documents show that they internalize Sword/Shield, Brilliant Diamond/Shining Pearl, and Legends: Arceus as all being entirely separate generations from one another unlike fans who all put them under the banner of "Gen VIII"

Because of this, I think it makes perfect sense to have the Pokemon sorted by the Region they were first available in within the games like Home does rather than any other factors.
 
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Nokocchi said:
In fact recent internal coding documents show that they internalize Sword/Shield, Brilliant Diamond/Shining Pearl, and Legends: Arceus as all being entirely separate generations from one another unlike fans who all put them under the banner of "Gen VIII"
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I assume that's just to ensure HOME does not goof things up and think that everything is transferrable between those sets of games.
 
Nokocchi said:
Gamefreak themselves have stated that they don't internally divide things by Generations the way fans do. In fact this has become way more obvious post-dexit with the switch games, with every single set of titles since Let's Go having their own unique Origin symbol for Pokemon caught in those games. In fact recent internal coding documents show that they internalize Sword/Shield, Brilliant Diamond/Shining Pearl, and Legends: Arceus as all being entirely separate generations from one another unlike fans who all put them under the banner of "Gen VIII"

Because of this, I think it makes perfect sense to have the Pokemon sorted by the Region they were first available in within the games like Home does rather than any other factors.
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While it's definitely not the same as fans in terms of hard numbers, and clearly have some other internal naming going on, they definitely do line up with fans in some way.
SWSH & SV are marketed & talked about very differently than Let's Go & Legends Arceus and the Pokemon to match. There's a difference between a "next step" and an actual "next step", if you catch my drift.

Segregating them into regions instead of numbers makes more sense from an easthetics point of view. It's similar to how they don't show the hard numbers of things like IVs and EVs and so on, but obsfucate them with fancy graphs.
But this leads to the logical thing of "Meltan & Meltmal, and the Hisui Pokemon, are by definition not 'discovered' in Alola or Galar", so they get their own separate instances in a way that the USUM Pokemon didn't.

So like i get it but also it's just dumb when you got these whole sections dedicated to 2 pokemon and 7 pokemon. And dumber when the listing for Meltan & Melmetal's "Unknown Region" are put below everyone else. We'll be in Gen 10 and they'll still be at the bottom, likely all alone. It probably would have been easier just to say "Alola and more" and "Galar and more" or whatever.
And it really gets my goat that the Hisui region is represented by the starters, which again makes sense (for the record the unknown region doesnt display anything), but is silly when they're (1) all old starters and (2) not listed in the category because they aren't Hisui pokemon.

anyway it's silly is what i'm getting at


And...slight nitpick here but...the unique Origin Symbols don't mean anything about generations. It's because of legality. Gen 6 had XY & ORAS share a symbol because they were fully intercompatible and the Pentagon represented that (same with SM & USUM), but even in Gen 6 the VC pokemon had a gameboy symbol and the (present but unused until Let's Go, mind you) Go pokemon had the Go symbol. They could have just left them markless, but it's certainly more flavorful to have the symbols to differentiate them from gen 3-5 pokemon.
So then they just kept...doing that. BDSP & Arceus need separate marks to account for their respective game's weirdness with movesets and make sure it was clear they couldn't bring that over (granted the moveset reset feature they wound up going with made all this a bit moot but....)
 
the quad.JPG

I really like how the trade evolution squad from Gen I parallel each other in several small ways. I think of them in the configuration above a lot, because I think each parallels two of the other three while not having much in common with the third.

Alakazam and Gengar parallel each other by being the specially-inclined "brains" pair, while Golem and Machamp parallel each other by being the physically-inclined "brawns" pair. But Golem also parallels Gengar; Golem and Gengar are the non-humanoid pairing dual-typed pairing who can both use exploding moves, and Golem has an advantage over Gengar in generations where Levitate isn't a factor. Their stats are also relatively mirrored, with Gengar excelling in Special and Speed while Golem excels in HP, Attack, and Defence. This counterbalances Alakazam and Machamp who make an obvious pairing by being the single-typed humanoid brain-vs-brawn duo, with Alakazam having the distinct advantage; their stats are similarly mirrored. Thus, brains wins in one of the matchups while brawn wins the other.

Some of those may not be intentional parallels, and some may be things I've just perceived. But parallels need not be intentional to be observed, and I think there's some fun symmetry with these guys.

I don't think Game Freak set out to make them deliberate counterparts, especially since they aren't balanced. On the strength of their typings alone, Alakazam beats Gengar and Machamp, Machamp beats Golem, Golem beats Gengar, and Gengar beats Machamp while having an advantage against Alakazam too. I don't think Alakazam particularly parallels Golem, nor Machamp to Gengar. Also, Golem is the only one to get a regional form.
 
green_typhlosion said:
View attachment 434866
I really like how the trade evolution squad from Gen I parallel each other in several small ways. I think of them in the configuration above a lot, because I think each parallels two of the other three while not having much in common with the third.

Alakazam and Gengar parallel each other by being the specially-inclined "brains" pair, while Golem and Machamp parallel each other by being the physically-inclined "brawns" pair. But Golem also parallels Gengar; Golem and Gengar are the non-humanoid pairing dual-typed pairing who can both use exploding moves, and Golem has an advantage over Gengar in generations where Levitate isn't a factor. Their stats are also relatively mirrored, with Gengar excelling in Special and Speed while Golem excels in HP, Attack, and Defence. This counterbalances Alakazam and Machamp who make an obvious pairing by being the single-typed humanoid brain-vs-brawn duo, with Alakazam having the distinct advantage; their stats are similarly mirrored. Thus, brains wins in one of the matchups while brawn wins the other.

Some of those may not be intentional parallels, and some may be things I've just perceived. But parallels need not be intentional to be observed, and I think there's some fun symmetry with these guys.

I don't think Game Freak set out to make them deliberate counterparts, especially since they aren't balanced. On the strength of their typings alone, Alakazam beats Gengar and Machamp, Machamp beats Golem, Golem beats Gengar, and Gengar beats Machamp while having an advantage against Alakazam too. I don't think Alakazam particularly parallels Golem, nor Machamp to Gengar. Also, Golem is the only one to get a regional form.
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Conveniently enough, I actually just recently stumbled across a random reddit post theorizing about why Machamp and Golem have such differences from their pre evos, whose certain traits are shared with the other evolution line's final evo instead.

https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/5apam9

1656968331175.png
 
sg pokemon said:
Conveniently enough, I actually just recently stumbled across a random reddit post theorizing about why Machamp and Golem have such differences from their pre evos, whose certain traits are shared with the other evolution line's final evo instead.

https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/5apam9

View attachment 434914
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Yes, I remember this. I believe it was recently shared in the "Pokemon whose mechanics suit a different generation" thread. It's pretty plausible tbh.

There's also the theory that Gengar is (or was initially designed to be) a dead Clefable, due to the similarity of their silhouettes. That one's less plausible to me, though interesting in concept. It would make sense if Ghost Pokemon weren't their own species, but were instead only the spirits of other Pokemon. But I think that idea isn't really canon - Ghost species are very much their own species - i.e. a Gengar is a Gengar, and the spirit of a dead Rapidash would be a Rapidash, not a Duskull.
 
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